The Wind Never Stops Blowing In South Africa: Another Epic Downwind Race

posted December 5th, 2012 by Peter Petersen, South Africa Correspondent

The wind just doesn’t want to stop blowing this year!

For 8 out of the last 9 weeks we’ve had solid wind and great downwinding conditions in Cape Town, South Africa, for the PRIMI Naish Downwind Dash race series. Tonight we were greeted by 20-30knots of steady SE wind with a tinge of South – perfect angle for a straight 10km run up to Big Bay. Great turn-out as well with 44 surfskis and 39 SUPs.

The first starting group saw a few casualties in the 1 metre surf, including Guy Bubb who delayed his departure after a couple of dismounts.. The second start group, which included the Elite paddlers, also faced a nice little set on the way out, which kept things interesting. It was impressive to see the big wave boys Chris Bertish, Greg Bertish, Francois Frick and James Taylor making it out the back first – they just put their heads down and punched through the waves, while others deliberated and got left behind.

Chris Bertish was on a mission to seal the series overall win and he was very fast out of the gate. If he had been a roadrunner the “meep meep” sound would have sprung to mind. The pursuit team consisting of Colin Heckroodt, Ivan van Vuuren and Greg Bertish were battling to keep up and it was only at the halfway mark that Colin Heckroodt started making some inroads. Colin was paddling like a man possessed, pure power and grit – I estimate that the kW output he was producing would have lit up a small city had he been hooked up to the grid…

So I can only imagine his despair when he finally caught up to Chris and all he heard was another “meep meep” as Chris put the hammer down and left him standing once more.

Chris then cruised onto victory while Ivan van Vuuren once again took a very wide line, which paid dividends coming into Small Bay. He caught and passed Colin and actually made the beach first – but Ivan had come in on the wrong side of the finish buoy and had to run back out to get around it the right way, and in doing so, just allowed Colin to sneak past with 2 seconds to spare to take second. Chris’ brother Greg Bertish came in 4th – which now sees him take over Dylan Frick’s 2nd place in the overall series rankings. Dylan tried a different board tonight which didn’t work out for him and he had to settle for 8th in this race, which wasn’t bad considering he stopped and did a board swap with his dad at the halfway mark!

In the ladies section Brigette van Aswegen and Mishka Steyn continued their total domination with 1st and 2nd while Tammy Robarts managed to take a fine 3rd. In the juniors Joshua Robertson very nearly got the better of series leader Ethan Koopmans, but in the end Ethan did just enough to sneak ahead to take 1st while Matthew Maxwell once again came third.

Next week is the final edition of this year’s PRIMI Naish Downwind Dash Series – wind forecast is currently looking promising so lets see if we can make it 9 out of 10!

We’ll have a x-mas theme for our last race, so we encourage everyone to dress up in a x-massy fashion + we’ll have a massive prize-giving with trophies for our winners + some surprise awards + a big raffle for some great SUP and Ski paddles – all monies collected will go to support Richards Kohlers charity in conjunction with Paddling for Smiles.

So not only do we encourage you to dress up and take part next week – we insist you stay on for the prize-giving – it’s going to be huge! After next week we take a break and then we resume on the 9th of Jan until 13th March with another 10x races for the PRIMI Naish Downwind Dash Series 2013!